Towards LIFT Asia

SO... LIFT is going to South Korea for LIFT Asia 08, a three-day event taking place on Che-Ju island on September 4, 5 and 6.
As in Geneva, the conference theme revolves around social change in information society. What we mean by that is that we will focus on the influence of technologies such as the web, mobile software and ubiquitous computing on our societies in domains such future cities, social media, mobility, sustainability or money transactions. Our goal is to spark discussions about the important changes, challenges and opportunities brought by technology, with the great diversity of the participants and their contributions providing a global reach.

An envigorating mix of researchers, designers, entrepreneurs, policy-makers and other thinkers will present us their viewpoints on eight topics: Beyond the web we know, Online for better society, Towards a Networked City, From robots to networked objects, The near future of social worlds, Techno-nomadic life, Virtual money and green tech. Since the conference is going to be held in South Asia, it's also our purpose to have a mix of westerners and asian speakers for each session so that discussion deal with a mix of perspectives.

Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling and UK consultant David Birch will talk about virtual money: Recent changes in the digitalisation of money are less perceptible than more glamorous technologies, but they are of considerable importance. New banking solutions and money circulation practices are around.

In "Aiming for a better society" Wonsun Park from Hope Society and Raphael Grignani from Nokia will describe how technologies can help shaping a more inclusive and sustainable society as well take advantage of the world's diversity.

Given that the urban environment is of considerable importance when it comes to technological development, we will have a dedicated session about the Networked City with 2 architects Jeffrey Huang and Yang Soo Yin as well as user experience specialist Adam Greenfield. They will describe how new digital layers provided by ICTs on contemporary cities have now become reality and what it will mean for its inhabitants.

Close to the future of the city, mobility will also be a hot theme with the "Techno-nomadic life" session with design researcher Jan Chipchase, i-mode inventor Takeshi Nastuno and Christian Lindholm. They will talk about the user experience is reshaped by mobile technologies, and whether the mobile Web is going through the same process as the Web of the 90s.

Social platforms and media such as the one developed by Nexon will also be an important topic with Jonmoo Kwon, among other speakers. Social platforms on the Web and Massive Multi-Player games are indeed now merging in a new category of digital entertainment platforms with new business models and screens such as mobile phones. This will eventually lead to innovative usage and new forms of sociality.

In the "Beyond the web we know" session, we will talk about what's exciting on the web from the near future, what comes after web2.0 with Laurent Haug and Eric Rodenbeck from Stamen Design.

Moreover, a special event about sustainable development will feature Dan Dubno who will talk about green gadgets and an upcoming speaker coming from a NGO.

The final session will be about robotics and the convergence towards networked objects, or how current robots are going beyond the traditional anthropomorphism and start to communicate with Tomoaki Kasuga, Frédéric Kaplan and Bruno Bonnell.